Interface Roughening in Nonequilibrium Phase-Separated Systems

Interfaces of phase-separated systems roughen in time due to capillary waves. Because of fluxes in the bulk, their dynamics is nonlocal in real space and is not described by the Edwards-Wilkinson or Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) equations, nor their conserved counterparts. We show that, in the absence of detailed balance, the phase-separated interface is described by a new universality class that we term IqIKPZ. We compute the associated scaling exponents via one-loop renormalization group and corroborate the results by numerical integration of the IqIKPZ equation. Deriving the effective interface dynamics from a minimal field theory of active phase separation, we finally argue that the IqIKPZ universality class generically describes liquid-vapor interfaces in two-and three-dimensional active systems.

Automated summary

Interfaces of phase-separated systems roughen in time due to capillary waves and their dynamics is nonlocal in real space. We introduce a new universality class named IqIKPZ to describe the phase-separated interface in the absence of detailed balance. The associated scaling exponents are computed using one-loop renormalization group and verified through numerical integration of the IqIKPZ equation. We argue that the IqIKPZ universality class generically describes liquid-vapor interfaces in two-and three-dimensional active systems.